A92141:791
Influences of the life of grace
Influences of the life of grace. Or, A practical treatise concerning the way, manner, and means of having and improving of spiritual dispositions, and quickening influences from Christ the resurrection and the life. By Samuel Rutherfurd, Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.Influences of the life of grace. Or, A practical treatise concerning the way, manner, and means of having and improving of spiritual dispositions, and quickning influences from Christ the resurrection and the life. By Samuel Rutherfurd, Professor of Divinity in the Vniversity of St. Andrews in Scotland.
London: printed by T.C. for Andrew Crook, 1659
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. The heart is one thing, and the heavenly preparedness of the heart is another thing: As the subject iron differs from the fierceness and heat in iron, and the water differs from the cold and heat that goes and comes from and to the water; so dispositions are spiritual qualities, and the affections the subject; the heart is sometimes cold, and sometimes hot, lively or dead, as the Lord is pleased to visit.
Q. May we not then say that dispositions are the affections heavenly disposed?
Answ. Not so neither; the affections are not the complete and adequate subject of heavenly dispositions,1 because there is often a heavenly disposition in the mind to know spiritual truths; so Elihu, Job 34. 32. That which I see not, teach thou me. An heavenly propension in the mind to be taught of God, Psal. 119. 18, 26. There is a heavenly disposition of the spiritual mind to believe the Scriptures; and in place of that there is a slowness to believe divine truths, rebuked by our Saviour, Luke 24. 25.
Answ. Not so neither; the affections are not the compleat and adequate subject of heavenly dispositions,1 because there is often a heavenly disposition in the mind to know spiritual truths; so Elihu, Job 34. 32